By a Biometrica staffer Even one incident of mass violence at a school is one too many. Going by that metric, the United States has had far too many to ignore over the course of the last two decades: from Virginia to...

By Charlotte Spencer The Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act (hereafter, the Act) is a relatively new law designed to help do exactly what its title suggests. The Act — S. 1536 — passed the House and Senate in 2017, and...

By Deepti Govind Sometime between Friday night and Monday morning over this weekend, the Chabad on River synagogue was vandalized with a swastika and an antisemitic slur. A congregant found the hate symbols at 8 a.m. Monday, June 7, when they arrived early...

By Deepti Govind Even in the bloody world of the most violent crimes, dogfighting is considered particularly heinous. Why? First, dogs used for fighting are brought up and trained in rather cruel ways. They are typically kept in isolation and spend most...

By Dmitry Shifrin, Mary Tobin & Lindsay Dailey Polsinelli PC, Chicago, Illinois Biometric information and biometric identifiers are becoming more highly regulated in today’s data privacy and cybersecurity conscious landscape. Like other types of personal data, biometrics have the potential to identify...

By Jan Edwards May 25 was International Mission Children’s Day. Globally, more than one million children are reported missing every year. ICMEC considers any child under the age of 18 whose whereabouts are unknown to be “missing.” This includes children who have...

By a Biometrica staffer This Memorial Day weekend, Indigenous Americans from all over the U.S. headed to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to be part of an important tradition: The Indian Relay, a horse racing competition. To say horses are a critical part of the...

By Charlotte Spencer The United States’ DNA database laws, many may be surprised to find, are not uniform across the country. Rather, they are a patchwork of laws that vary in when DNA can be taken, why DNA can be taken, how...

By a Biometrica staffer Source: Screengrab from the DOJ-OJP report showing total juvenile arrests since 1980 In 2019, the number of arrests involving juveniles — persons younger than 18 — was estimated to be less than 700,000. That's the lowest level since...

By a Biometrica staffer Today, May 25, is International Missing Children's Day. Over one million children are reported missing every year, the International Centre For Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) says on its website. In 2020, the National Center For Missing &...

By Charlotte Spencer On Monday May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court issued a ruling further clarifying fourth amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment, and the long history of case law surrounding it, deals with search and seizure, specifically when it is allowed, and...

Even as Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital token, and other cryptocurrencies continued their dramatic free fall Wednesday, we thought it would be a good day to remind people as to why Bitcoin remains a perfect tool for regulators, investigators, banks and nonbank...

By a Biometrica staffer The Covid-19 pandemic has, undoubtedly, disrupted everyone's lives across the world. Yet, most of us have managed to find a semblance of normal and continue to follow our routines. So, it would be folly to assume that criminal...

By a Biometrica staffer Every year, as the tax season begins, so does an uptick in tax related frauds and scams. The season began on Feb. 12 this year, when the window for taxpayers to start filing their returns to the Internal...

By Charlotte Spencer On Wednesday, we ran a short article going over the basics of the recent court decision in the Northern District of Texas which granted a motion to dismiss the National Rifle Association's (NRA) attempt to file bankruptcy. This article...

By Kacy Robinson Search dog handlers have a unique advantage simply because we have highly trained and very specialized canines to aid us in our work, but that doesn’t mean we can allow all the other skills we have spent decades gaining...

By a Biometrica staffer Are consumers being treated fairly if manufacturers of products they've bought impose repair restrictions? That's the question that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) aims to answer in a comprehensive 56-page report. The conclusion, basically, is that the treatment...

By a Biometrica staffer Just last month, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said in a blog that over the last five years, ransomware has evolved from being "a threat to individual computers to posing a serious danger to corporate networks." Or, to put it...

By Charlotte Spencer Protective orders, also known as protection orders, are designed to protect people or animals from an ongoing threat. They are often used in domestic violence cases, and can vary a lot by jurisdiction. They are not by any stretch...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2018, a total of 4,135 state prisoners died in publicly or privately operated prisons, and an additional 378 federal prisoners died in facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), according to a report published by...

By Charlotte Spencer It is estimated that more than 600,000 individuals go missing in the United States every year. While many of those missing are found relatively quickly, thousands disappear, for different reasons, whether by choice or not, for more than a year,...

By a Biometrica staffer Four out of every five small and medium-sized (SME) companies in the world suffer from counterfeits and brand abuse on the internet, a study by the anti-piracy and brand protection company Smart Protection found. The trend among cybercriminals...

By Charlotte Spencer As of April, 2021, Congress is considering several different pieces of legislation which address hate crimes. Many of them focus on hate crimes directly. Others have a different focus, but also take on the subject of hate crimes. Here...

In 2020, just 5,030 of 18,514 law enforcement agencies active in the United States that year provided use-of-force data to the FBI between January and August (we do not have data details as yet for the period post August). In 2019, that number was marginally higher...